What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

It's easier to know people in general than one person in particular

As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.

A man of understanding finds less difficulty in submitting to a wrong-headed fellow, than in attempting to set him right.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

We would rather see those to whom we do good, than those who do good to us.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.